Question

How will it be

to lie in the sky

without roof or door

and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift

how will I hide?

from Question by May Swenson

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda - Love Sonnet XVII

"Memory is both a truth serum and embalming medium"
from NY Times Keith Edmier Art Review - Personal History, Captured in Plastic by Holland Carter

William Butler Yeats

"lins" . . . a commenter on Gronks myspace page posted a Spanish translation of the poem "Cloths of Heaven" by Yeats...I was curious about the original English wording, so a tracked down the original and along the way had the chance to look at some literary criticism on Yeats love poems. The criticism suggests that for Yeats "love is both the subject and stuff of the poems, the genre closest to the psychological base of the poetic process... a poet cannot possibly achieve both forms of "love": possession of the woman and of the poem are mutually exclusive, if the poet must lose the beloved to gain the desire that sustains his poetry. The implication is that the object of affection must be absent, incapable of reciprocating or receiving his desire, so that he may work up the poetry's desire in language."

"A Little Space": The Psychic Economy of Yeasts' Love Poems
Journal article by Jahan Ramazani; Criticism, Vol. 35, 1993

I cannot attribute the Spanish translation, but here it is as posted:

Si tuviese yo las telas bordadas del cielo,
Recamadas con luz dorada y plateada,
Las telas azules y las tenues y las oscuras
De la noche y la luz y la media luz,
Extendería las telas bajo tus pies:
Pero, siendo pobre, sólo tengo mis sueños;
He extendido mis sueños bajo tus pies;
Pisa suavemente, pues pisas mis sueños.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

back to collage